Piazza dreaming big while reshaping baseball’s foundation in Italy

“It all starts with a dream.”

Ask Mike Piazza about his goals for baseball in Italy and he’ll likely find his way back to this thought. The Hall of Fame catcher has already made multiple noteworthy contributions to help support the country’s baseball ambitions, representing Italy both on the field and in the dugout during previous World Baseball Classics. But the 55-year-old remains eager to grow the game in a land where soccer is king, and he knows such a tall task requires much more than making cameos at international tournaments once or twice a decade.

That’s why Piazza, who now resides in Parma, has shifted his sights towards baseball’s foundation in Italy, focusing less on professionals and more on what can be done to improve the way they’re brought up before they get that far. He aspires to not only reshape the development of young Italians, but do so in a way that builds such an undeniable admiration for baseball that those same players eventually take the baton from Piazza when he’s ready to pass it off.

“I really enjoy living in Italy and I love helping, but it's not really about me. It's about the next generation,” Piazza said. “I can't do this forever, and I want to hopefully leave a little bit of a legacy behind to where we focus on getting to player development and getting players that love the game, have passion for the game, achieve and get to wherever they can play professionally and then bring those experiences back.”

Piazza is a prime example of the player he’s hoping to mold. His loyalties to the Italian roots from his father’s side are well documented and represent a major reason why he’s spent the years following his triumphant MLB career finding multiple ways to contribute to Italy’s World Baseball Classic appearances. Piazza played for Team Italy in the inaugural 2006 Classic before serving as the team’s hitting coach during the ’09 and 2013 tournaments before taking the helm as manager last year.

The 12-time All-Star used that opportunity to invite some of the big leaguers on his Team Italy roster over to their ancestors’ home country to help them reconnect with their roots and train with Italian-born players. Piazza wanted them to not only soak in the culture, but also see first-hand the passion the country boasts for baseball.

Still, Piazza knows improving the sport’s foothold in Italy goes beyond the contributions of veteran national players and big leaguers with Italian heritage. He’s become an active leader with the Italian Baseball and Softball Federation (FIBS), where he’s stressed the importance of building a love for baseball from the ground up. In Piazza’s eyes, reshaping the sport’s place in Italy comes down to getting younger generations active as early as possible.

“Baseball is not a traditional sport here,” Piazza said. “When you don't come from a traditional baseball culture, I think people don't understand that the only way to get better is to play.

“When I was a kid, we would just go out and play. We’d play all the time, we make mistakes, we would self-correct. We would be our own best coaches, and I think that gets lost a little bit today.”

To Piazza, a lack of focus on repetition among adolescent Italian players hampered the country’s regional academy system. Though these academies were producing talent that eventually left Italy to pursue professional careers, not having an established dedication for the sport ahead of time resulted in a case of culture shock.

“Generally, they just weren't ready for professional baseball, and they not only did not move up the ladder, but they came back and they actually were very disenchanted with baseball,” Piazza said. “Even if a guy isn't going to make the Major Leagues, you would hope, especially in a country like Italy, that he would come back and coach and be involved. There's just many examples of guys that just went over there, became discouraged and the dream kind of died.”

While Piazza has identified what he views as the biggest hurdle in building baseball’s popularity among Italians, addressing it is no easy feat. The country has several youth baseball leagues, but resources are limited. Facilities are lacking, as is continuity among Italian coaching staffs, and many of the clubs are too spread out geographically for ideal league play. Creating new ways to improve youth development may have been seen as the key to Piazza’s mission, but the assets needed to do so just weren’t readily available.

This didn’t stop the search for solutions that were outside the box, as well as outside Italian borders.

Late last year, Piazza and FIBS struck up a partnership with Steel Sports, a social impact organization based out of New Jersey that focuses on developing young athletes through positive coaching. Using an approach inspired by Piazza’s first big league manager, Hall of Famer Tommy Lasorda, Steel applies techniques that associate character building moments through baseball, teaching coaches to create an environment where players can learn from mistakes on the field and further their athletic growth.

Through this alliance -- the first international venture in Steel Sports’ 13-year history -- over 60 Italian baseball coaches completed courses designed to help them connect with young players and reshape the way they’re being trained. Though the organization was initially wary about how receptive Italians would be toward learning and applying brand new coaching principles, Piazza’s endorsement went a long way towards ensuring its success.

“The passion that he shows on a daily basis really helps drive this through,” Steel Sports president and CEO Martin Brown said. “I don’t think that we can be successful without the support, passion and energy of Mike.

“Every baseball coach in Italy is looking up to Mike Piazza. When he’s telling you, ‘This is a great system and this is what we need to do to improve,’ people stand up and listen.”

While Italian coaches were soaking in these new techniques, Piazza sought more ways to get kids on the diamond. With aspirations for another WBC run with Team Italy in 2026, along with qualifying for the ’28 Olympics in Los Angeles, increasing opportunities for progress is more important now than ever. Whether it be through youth clinics he hosts throughout Italy or his helping FIBS’ push to reopen its national baseball academy after it closed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Piazza remains driven to prevent the disenchantment seen from previous generations.

“The more kids you can get together, the more games you can play,” Piazza said. “Then we can hopefully get these kids ready and they can go to the United States and get more reps there in the high schools and universities.”

This American pipeline is yet another avenue Piazza and FIBS have leaned upon to create more chances for the exposure they view as necessary for the growth of the game. It’s allowed them to get young players vital training at the kinds of facilities that can’t be found in Italy, and it’s a route that just recently found new venues.

This fall, FIBS will be sending its Club Italia Olympic prospect team to Florida to take part in a collegiate series with the University of Tampa’s men’s baseball team, which is fresh off its ninth Division II national championship in program history. In the week leading up to the event, the team will be in Surprise, Ariz., taking part in instructional league workouts at the Royals’ Spring Training facility. These workouts, arranged by Kansas City’s Minor League operations director Nick Leto, will provide some of Italy’s up-and-comers access to resources and training unlike anything currently available in their home country.

“A lot of kids in that group will be experiencing a lot of things for the first time,” said Leto, a fellow Italian American. “I want to be able to influence and give young players any kind of opportunity to develop to be the best they can be. Being able to help that federation in any fashion, it’s just such an honor.”

While these partnerships illustrate the lengths at which Piazza and FIBS are willing to go to provide unique developmental opportunities, this increased focus on getting young players more experience by way of overseas travel also represents an area where Piazza’s ambitions bumped heads with Italian traditions.

“Italian families are very close,” Piazza said, “and because the families are very tight, it’s not traditional for a kid to leave the family at a young age and go play abroad or even go across the country. So we’re fighting those cultural things, as well.

“There's nothing wrong with that. But now the parents are starting to understand that, if these kids want to play, we have to get with the times as far as the way kids are being developed today in the United States with travel teams.”

Piazza and FIBS hammered that message home last August via Mathieu Silva, an Italian middle-school standout who became the youngest player the federation has sent to America in order to further his baseball training. As word of Silva’s journey to Lake Castle -- a private K-8 school in Madisonville, La., that has produced nine MLB Draft selections since 1995 -- began spreading throughout Italy, Piazza was suddenly hearing from families eager to learn about how they could take part.

“Italians are very competitive,” Piazza said, “and they're like, ‘Well, how was he chosen? And why didn't we know?’ It created a good reaction and hopefully will tell kids, ‘Hey, if you want to do it, let's get involved. Let's try to find another spot for you.’

“It was totally organic. We didn't really engineer that in a sense to create a reaction. … You’ve got to shock the system a little bit sometimes.”

It’d be harder to summarize Piazza’s goals for the growth of baseball in Italy more plainly than that. While the sport has established a presence in Italian culture, the lower rungs of the developmental ladder are in need of repair. The difficulty of addressing that task is not lost on Piazza, but after being taken in the 62nd round of the 1988 MLB Draft and proceeding to assemble a résumé worthy of a plaque in Cooperstown, it’s an obstacle he’s more than prepared to handle.

“My career has never been easy,” Piazza said. “I guess I’m used to taking a difficult road. Maybe it's just one of the burdens that I have in life, but it's fun. … So it starts with a dream, and hopefully you put a flag in the ground and get people behind you.”

The past year has served as proof that’s already taking place. From FIBS, to Steel Sports, to the Royals, many have seen Piazza’s steadfast dedication towards growing baseball in Italy and embraced his mission to produce players who will be ready to take the mantle when he feels his job is complete.

“It’s a challenge,” Piazza said. “But this is a passion thing. I want to hopefully leave a little something before I turn the page on this chapter in my life.”